Expert Cube Development with SSAS Multidimensional Models

Expert tips and tricks for designing Analysis Services Multidimensional Models

Overview

• Design SQL Server Analysis Services cubes, dimensions, and calculations from the experts!
• Add calculations to the cube, including implementing currency conversion and a date tool dimension
• Use security to control access to data in your cube

In Detail

Microsoft’s SQL Server Analysis Services 2012 Multidimensional is an OLAP server that allows end users to analyze large amounts of business data quickly and easily, using a variety of tools including Excel, and to create their own reports without IT involvement. It is part of the Microsoft SQL Server suite of tools and has been used widely on Business Intelligence projects for the last 15 years; it is now the most commonly used OLAP server in the world.

Expert Cube Development with SSAS Multidimensional Models will teach you tips and tricks for cube design from some of the most experienced Analysis Services experts in the world. Topics covered include designing dimensions and cubes, implementing common MDX calculations, security and performance tuning.

The book takes you through the whole lifecycle of Analysis Services cube development, from how data warehouse design affects your cube, through cube and dimension design to performance tuning and monitoring. Some previous experience of Analysis Services is assumed – the focus is on best practices and design patterns.

The book starts off with a discussion of data warehouse design and how it relates to Analysis Services. Following on from that, best practices relating to Analysis Services cube and dimension design are covered, including topics such as optimizing dimension attribute relationships and handling fact tables that contain data at different granularities.

Next, the book looks at using MDX to implement common business calculations, and then moves on to more advanced problems like currency conversion calculations and creating a date tool dimensions.

Finally security, performance tuning, automation of administrative tasks and monitoring usage and performance each get their own chapter and subject such as dynamic security roles, using Profiler to diagnose query performance problems and automating partition creation are also dealt with.

What you will learn from this book

• Build a data mart suitable for use with Analysis Services
• Work with a thread pool effectively
• Create and configure an Analysis Services project in SQL Server Data Tools
• Use the Dimension Wizard and the Dimension Editor to build dimensions
• Create measure groups and associate them with dimensions
• Design cubes and dimensions and also implement common calculations in MDX
• Explore the security model, including dimension security and cell security, and implement dynamic security
• Tune queries to get the best possible performance
• Automate processing and partition creation
• Monitor your cube to see who’s actually using it

Approach

An easy-to-follow guide full of hands on examples of real-world Analysis Services cube development tasks. Each topic is explained and placed in context, and for the more inquisitive reader, there also more in-depth details of the concepts used.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Designing the Data Warehouse for Analysis Services
Chapter 2: Building Basic Dimensions and Cubes
Chapter 3: Designing More Complex Dimensions
Chapter 4: Measures and Measure Groups
Chapter 5: Handling Transactional-level Data
Chapter 6: Adding Calculations to the Cube
Chapter 7: Adding Currency Conversion
Chapter 8: Query Performance Tuning
Chapter 9: Securing the Cube
Chapter 10: Going in Production
Chapter 11: Monitoring Cube Performance and Usage
Appendix: DAX Query Support